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How about a healthy candygram for Valentine’s Day?

Earth + City offers a limited-time confection delivery service that includes macaroons and candygrams to sweeten your Valentine celebration.

Earth+City owner Lisa Sweetman and her handmade Cinnamon Heart Macaroons, which are ready for delivery as a candygram, at their kitchens in Toronto, Ont. on Monday, February 1, 2015. (J.P. MOCZULSKI / The Toronto Star)

It’s something you’ve always wished for; a little bit of sweet attention on a day devoted to romance.

And if you’ve ever received a candygram — opening it ablush in front of friends or colleagues — you know, it just makes your month.

“It’s so fun when people do something spontaneous for you,” says entrepreneur Lisa Sweetman, 34. “And it’s a throwback.”

Sweetman, co-owner of Earth + City, a small company devoted to prepared plant-based food, will never forget when a candygram arrived on her desk during high school calculus from a boy whose homework she often completed — and had a crush on. It said something like “thank you for doing my French homework,” she says.

That memory — and her warm, fuzzy and lingering feelings — may have had something to do with the candygram her company is offering this month.

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For $20, staff will deliver a petite package, bearing a handwritten love note and three of the company’s signature macaroons, to four special someones across the city on Feb. 12 and 13 (order online).

A mainstay of the business, Earth + City’s macaroon is a plump, decadent ball of coconut and spices. More than 500 of these handmade confections are sold at farmers’ markets, stores and eateries across the city each week, including Kupfert & Kim, where they’re displayed like gems.

Since the company sells three different types of macaroon at once — vanilla and cacao are always available — they create a new one each month.

It was during a brainstorm session for February’s flavour that Sweetman’s business partner, Cassandra Rizzotto, 32, came up with the Cinnamon Heart Macaroon (coloured red with beet juice, and spiced with organic cinnamon and bits of fresh red chilies) — and the candygram.

Searching to align their latest macaroon with heart month, and not just romance, the women are hoping this limited-time confection delivery service becomes a “special celebration of all the people you love and have relationships with,” Sweetman says, and reminds eaters to mind the health of their tickers, too.

What better way to do that, she says, than with “plant-based” foods?

Like all Earth + City’s menu items, each macaroon is made without animal products. A challenge when the coconut shards in traditional macaroon recipes call for a binder of eggs or condensed milk. Or both.

But that doesn’t seem to present any issues for Earth + City, which began in 2010, after Sweetman and Rizzotto bonded over artwork (Sweetman bought a painting by Rizzotto and, a while later, the two became friends).

Driven by health issues, Sweetman decided to eat only whole and healing foods. Rizzotto was on the same page. Beloved as a dessert by vegan eaters who heartily embrace the coconut, the macaroon is one of their original items.

Once the mixture is made, Sweetman has a special way of forming each treat. It involves some complicated finger moves that demand one never lifts either pinky off the surface. Demonstrating, she uses mainly her longest fingers to corral the wayward coconut shreds into a bulging semi-sphere.

The final touch is added to the Cinnamon Heart Macaroons before they are made ready for delivery as Candygrams. (J.P. MOCZULSKI)

Drizzled with chocolate, the finished macaroon is hearty and bold with that pleasing, almost nutty texture coconut it’s known for. It’s the perfect way to round out a meal; small enough to indulge in often, yet large and beefy enough to leave you with a full happy belly.

Getting them delivered would be a real treat. And, to use Sweetman’s words, I have no doubt they will “spread the love throughout the city.”

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